Changing history
Speaking of books, my friend How Kuff wrote one that I’ve been slowly working my way through – it’s not a traditional novel, but it has a lot of good ideas. A lot of the same things that bother me bother How, and he has a little more distance from them so he expresses them more artfully. His characters are fighting with problems like what to do about the moral repercussions of your day job (if you make bombs, are you responsible for those they kill?), what the costs of endless commercialization might be, and what it might cost you to try and fight the Powers that Be – and what it might gain you.
You can buy a copy of his book at www.changing-history.com. I suspect that it’s one of those works that will take me many passes to fully appreciate, but there’s definitely some good content there.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
And I should also mention it’s available as a e-book – so you won’t even have to worry about lugging it around or the impact of killing a tenth of a tree to be able to read it. 😉
January 17th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
RE: Making bombs, I would say it actually depends on the political climate of the country at the time you are making them. But I would lean towards: Yes, you are.
but say you were making bombs for the WW2 effort in America? You’re responsible for those deaths, but that’s actually a good thing, because nazis suck, and military defeat was the only solution. (And we even avoided that for YEARS, ignoring the problem — kinda like Rwanda — until Japan stupidly brought us into the fray.)
January 28th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
but how about the german civilians that were killed by the bombs?
how about if a bunch of people in the middle east looked at us (the u.s. and its citiizens) as being enemies and destroyers of their culture and life and decide that it is righteous to bomb the u.s… and the civilians (perhaps you, your family and friends) just happen to get in the way?
January 28th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
At that point I would be edging my bets that the number of killed Germans would be far less than the number of saved Jews. Possibly thousands…
But as for the middle east, you just might be right. At least for some…